Timeline (1921-1924)

Date

Event

Impact

1920-21

  • Tambov peasant rebellion

  • increasing peasant anger

  • strikes in the cities

  • Peasants angry about continued grain requisitions even after war

1921

  • Economy in ruins

  • Grain production low

  • Disease + famine were rampant

  • Food shortages

  • Ban on factions

  • workers angry about conditions and lives

  • increased disillusion

  • strikes had to be broken up by Cheka

  • Once Central Committee decides, challenging party line = expulsion

March 1921

Kronstadt Rising

  • naval officers in contact with angry workers mutiny

  • calling for multi party democracy

  • ‘Soviets without Bolsheviks’

NEP introduced by Lenin

  • Lenin described it as ‘flash that lit up reality’

  • made it clear that things had to change

  • was accepted on temporary ground at Tenth Party Congress

1922

  • brisk trade

  • food in markets

  • rise of NEPmen sped recovery

  • Other nations view NEP as turn from Communism

  • Cheka → GPU

  • Decree authorises seizure of Church goods

  • NEPmen thrived in ‘get rich quick’ society

  • led to corruption and gaudy displays of luxury

  • trade agreement with Germany

  • GPU periodically arrested NEPmen to assure left that they were checking capitalistic tendencies

  • war on Church underway

3 April 1922

Stalin appointed General Secretary

Spring 1922

  • pre-publication censorship introduced

  • dozens of writers + scholars deported

  • systemic censorship

  • convince intelligentsia against criticising government

December 1922- January 1923

  • Lenin writes his testament

1923

  • factory output rose by almost 200% from 1920

  • NEPmen handle ¾ of retail

  • scissors crisis

  • nomenklatura established

  • food prices dropped but industrial good remained high

    • government acted and took peasant tax in cash rather than in kind

    • promoted selling surplus grain

  • create an elite of Bolshevik supporters in key positions

By 1924

  • large scale industry recovery underway

  • highly centralised Bolshevik party`

  • trade agreement with Britain

January 1924

Lenin dies

  • leaving a power struggle